SHOW TRANSCRIPT

This transcript is automatically generated by Descript.  Any errors or omissions are unintentional.

[00:00:00] Jeff Sieh: Hello folks. Welcome to Creator News Live. I’m Jeff c and you’re not. And this is a show that keeps you up to date on what’s happening in the world of social media. And so much more. Have you ever found out yourself unsure whether you’re actually handling your money the right way as a creator? Do taxes feel confusing, stressful, or like something you only deal once with once it’s already a problem?

[00:00:26] Jeff Sieh: Or maybe you’re earning more than ever, but still wondering where it’s all going? If any of that sounds familiar, you are in the right place. ’cause today we’re excited to welcome my friend Ralph Estep Jr. Back on the show. He’s an accountant who works closely with creators to bring clarity to finances that often feel overwhelming.

[00:00:45] Jeff Sieh: Ralph has spent decades helping business owners build simple systems, avoid costly mistakes, and gain confidence with their money. He’ll be sharing practical insights, real world examples, and forward guidance that every creator should hear. So sit [00:01:00] back, clear your schedule, clear your mind, and get ready for this week’s episode of Creator News Live. Ralph, thank you so much for being on the show today, my friend.

[00:01:09] Ralph Estep Jr.: Dude, that was awesome.

[00:01:10] Jeff Sieh: There you go. So you got,

[00:01:11] Ralph Estep Jr.: love it. I, I, I look forward to those every week when I’m able to tune into the show. I’m telling you it is. So much. It’s so cool. So Jeff, I know it’s fun for you to do it, but it’s also fun for us to watch it and enjoy that. Man, that is awesome stuff. Thank you so much for doing that.

[00:01:25] Jeff Sieh: Well, thank you. And you know, it’s really funny, the people I have on my show now have been requesting it afterwards, so I’ll make sure to send it to you. Uh, you can use it wherever you want. ’cause I know you’ve got podcast galore and we’re gonna talk about that. yeah, ’cause I, I didn’t mention the start of the show.

[00:01:36] Jeff Sieh: Ralph is not just like a accountant who specialized in creators. He is a creator. Like he does a lot of stuff. He has like, what is it for podcasts now, Ralph?

[00:01:45] Ralph Estep Jr.: Correct. I’m doing four active shows and I’m also a co-host and associate producer on podcasting morning chat every morning on Clubhouse. So absolutely. I, I, you know, I think I need a 12 step program for, for podcasting and content creation, but [00:02:00] no, and I, I’m appreciate you saying that, Jeff, because I’m not an accountant.

[00:02:03] Ralph Estep Jr.: I’m also a creator, just like all of you. So I, I get the stress, I get all those things.

[00:02:08] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. Very, very cool. And before we get too much into the weeds about, uh, finances I wanna do a big shout out to the people who help us make this show possible. It’s our friends over at Ecamm. You can find out more about them by going to Ecamm dot com slash Jeff. And one of the cool things is not only do they have this awesome, software that they do, they’re also putting together a brand new thing.

[00:02:30] Jeff Sieh: their New Leap program. They’re having a bunch of mini leaps this year. this one’s on Camera Confidence, and it’s actually starting up next week. Katie Fox is joined, professional coaches, Amanda Chopra, another, a brand Hoffman, who is a late night host, an improv specialist. They can, they’re gonna teach you groundbreaking techniques.

[00:02:47] Jeff Sieh: You’re gonna shift your mindset around performance, anxiety, and practice speaking and interviewing in a low pressure environment. You can find out more about it at leap dot Ecamm dot com.

[00:02:56] Jeff Sieh: That’s leap. dot com it is totally, [00:03:00] totally free. So make sure you guys go check that out. Alright, so we’re gonna go back here to Ralph and we’re gonna dive right into this. so one of the things, Ralph, I wanted to ask our audience, kind of right away. you know, one of the things we really struggle with as creators is our finances.

[00:03:18] Jeff Sieh: We just don’t talk about it, but I wanna know that from the audience. Like what part of Creator Finances stresses you out the most right now? Is it like tracking income? Is it your taxes? ’cause that’s coming up, not having a steady paycheck or, or is it all of the above? So let me know in the comments what are like really stresses you out as a creator when it comes to your finances.

[00:03:37] Jeff Sieh: Is it that tracking the income taxes, not having a steady paycheck or all of the above? Let us know down below wherever you’re watching from. But Ralph, we’re gonna be talking about, you know, creators having money issues. So. You say that most creators don’t actually have a tax problem, they have a system problem.

[00:03:56] Jeff Sieh: So what does that look like in real life when somebody [00:04:00] comes to you, a creator comes to you asking for help? What does it, what does that really look like?

[00:04:03] Ralph Estep Jr.: The big thing that I’ve seen, and, and this is where being a creator now, when I came into this, I did have no clue about this, the ecosystem of creators, to be very honest with you. I come from a place where business makes sense. Everything adds up, everything goes together. My biggest thing is Jeff mixing business and personal stuff together.

[00:04:24] Ralph Estep Jr.: Honestly, that is the thing that when I, when I meet with a new creator, I do that all the time. Now, the number one thing is they’re in the fog. I say they’re in the fog because they’ve got everything mixed together. And when you’re living in that, it’s constant confusion because you can’t tell what is yours and what’s the business.

[00:04:44] Ralph Estep Jr.: And, and if you, you know, you mentioned, is it tracking? Is it taxes? Well, if you’re living in the fog, you have no idea where to even get started because it, it gives you the sense of false confidence. You check your balance, you’re like, I’m fine. But what you don’t know is you’re not fine because some of the [00:05:00] money in your account, number one, is not even your money.

[00:05:03] Ralph Estep Jr.: It needs to get paid to Uncle Sam the end of the year. And it gives, you know, and you don’t, you never know when to make decisions. Here’s a great example of this. If you buy groceries and right next to it you buy a mic stand in Adobe subscription. How in the world do you know what your business is doing, where, what your personal is doing?

[00:05:19] Ralph Estep Jr.: And so if your money’s not separated, you never get to truth about what’s really going on in your business. And that’s what we really need to get to. The big takeaway, if you hear nothing else I say today, separate your money, business and personal. Now, the IRS or accounting lingo is called co-mingling.

[00:05:37] Ralph Estep Jr.: And basically what that means is that you have to keep things separate. You might be saying, okay, Ralph, who cares? Number one, how can you make a decision if you can’t see the reality if you’re in the fog? Second thing is if you ever get audited from the IRS, they are going to have a great time with you because there’s no separation.

[00:05:53] Ralph Estep Jr.: Things that you think are tax deductible, you’re gonna fight with them about, because they’re gonna say, wait a minute, how do I know that [00:06:00] this trip to Best Buy was for a microphone or for something like that, and it wasn’t a PS four or whatever. I don’t know what the kids are playing with now. Whatever.

[00:06:07] Ralph Estep Jr.: Whatever latest things are. And so that’s the thing. So if you don’t separate your money, you can’t get the truth, you can’t see clarity.

[00:06:14] Jeff Sieh: So I’m gonna ask, ’cause this is, I’m gonna use me as a real world example. before I started talking with you, a lot of times, I know for creators, you know, we’re, we’re scrambling together stuff and we, you know, we’re having to buy equipment and all this stuff and we like to put it on a credit card that gives us points or cash back or whatever.

[00:06:29] Jeff Sieh: And I think that’s what a lot of creators struggle with. They’re like, well, I can separate it out later. Like, everything’s electronic. I can go and say, oh, that Best Buy was for this, or this one was for that. And I can do it that way in whatever financial software that I get. So what do you tell creators who like, but I wanna, I wanna make points on my, you know, purchases and, and, and, you know, get as much bang for the buck as I can.

[00:06:49] Ralph Estep Jr.: I get it. I’ve got an American Express card I wanna do the same thing with, but the problem is it sounds good at the front end, but are you really going to do that? Here’s the thing you can [00:07:00] do. You don’t have to go out and get a specific business account, Jeff, it doesn’t have to be a quote business account.

[00:07:08] Ralph Estep Jr.: It can be a credit card that you only use for business. That’s, that’s the separation I’m talking about now. I will, we can talk about it later. I, I think there is definitely benefit in setting up an entity like an LLC or a Subchapter S corporation. And if you do that, you definitely want separate accounts.

[00:07:24] Ralph Estep Jr.: But if you’re new to this, you just wanna keep things separate, you can open up a separate checking account under your personal account. You can open up a separate credit card under your personal account. What I say is just, I’ll give you a great example. I, I deal with other kind of clients all the time.

[00:07:39] Ralph Estep Jr.: I had a plumber come in one time and he did exactly what you said. He said, you know, Ralph, I just throw it on this one because I get points and I can take trips and that’s fantastic. Well here, fast forward, we’re in March. And I said, okay, well last February you went and spent money. He goes, Ralph, that was a year ago.

[00:07:54] Ralph Estep Jr.: I’m like, this is the issue. I said, so here’s what I want you to do. I said, you have separate cards. He goes, oh, of course I [00:08:00] have separate cards. Okay, gimme your cards. And he said, whatcha gonna do my cards? I said, don’t worry, I’m not gonna cut ’em up. Although he probably should have had ’em cut up ’cause he didn’t have any concept of how to manage his money.

[00:08:07] Ralph Estep Jr.: But anyway, that’s another story. I said, here’s what I want you to do. I took a Sharpie outta my desk and I put a P on one personal and I put a B on the other business. And I said, dude, when you go to check out pick P or B and Jeff, it doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.

[00:08:24] Jeff Sieh: Right.

[00:08:25] Ralph Estep Jr.: I would rather have everything being on its own in a particular card than to play the game of mix and match.

[00:08:31] Ralph Estep Jr.: Because as soon as an IRS agent or a state tax authority sees mix and match. They’re going in. It’s like blood in the water, dude. They’re going to go find whatever they can find. If I’m representing a client and I have clean records and I can say, oh, here’s their personal account, here’s the business. It puts away a lot of problems.

[00:08:48] Ralph Estep Jr.: Could you go do what you said? Sure. Could you go say, Hey, every expense, this one was personal, this one was business. But I think that’s kind of like playing a game that doesn’t make sense in the long run, and it doesn’t really give you [00:09:00] clarity.

[00:09:00] Jeff Sieh: So I’m gonna go down this rabbit trail ’cause I think this is really fascinating. I think this is very, very helpful. Is that, so let’s say, oh, Ralph, I’ve been doing it the wrong way all this time. did I screw up everything? Am I gonna in trouble? Are they gonna knock it down on my door and take all my money?

[00:09:13] Jeff Sieh: Like what? What do you tell people like, Ralph, okay, you’ve convinced me, but I’ve been doing it wrong. What do I do now?

[00:09:18] Ralph Estep Jr.: Okay, cool. Thing that you need to know about me is I am not a judgment guy. I am not the guy that’s gonna say to you, you’ve been doing this all wrong. I’m gonna say to you, there’s really three stages of this. What are we gonna do today? Like, how do we change the dynamic if we’ve been doing it wrong? And I think there is right and wrong in this.

[00:09:34] Ralph Estep Jr.: We don’t have to judge ourselves what we did in the past. You don’t have to go back and recreate the last 10 years of the way you’ve been doing it incorrectly, but accept the fact that there might be a better way. So I always look at it like, so when I’m, when I’m counseling a client, I said, where are we today?

[00:09:47] Ralph Estep Jr.: Here’s what we’re, this is a real situation from this point forward, we’re gonna build a system that works correctly if for some reason, listen, the chance of you getting audited, if you’re not being outrageous, is very small. If [00:10:00] we get to that point, we go fix it. But don’t sweat that. I would much rather you put the energy into how do I build a system?

[00:10:07] Ralph Estep Jr.: Now, that’s the answer to the question, Jeff, because I can help you build a system. Now, if we have to go worry about the past, we can worry about the past. You know, we may need to do that right now, because right now it’s time to file your 2025 taxes and you’re coming to me and you’re like, Ralph, I, dude, I got a shoebox.

[00:10:22] Ralph Estep Jr.: I have no idea what happened. We need to go back and figure things out. But that you don’t judge yourself, don’t beat yourself up. I’ll give you a great example of this, Jeff. When I got into content creating, I had no idea about a lot of this stuff. I just hired a speaking coach. It’s a great example of this.

[00:10:38] Ralph Estep Jr.: I had a speaking coach. I have no idea how to do this. I, when I go back and listen to the stuff I recorded a couple years ago, I’m like, who in the world ever listens to? It’s horrible. It’s terrible. But a lot of content creators never had an accountant. They don’t understand the financial side. So just how I’m learning the speaking side, the content side, no one gave you a guidebook as a content creator of how to handle the [00:11:00] financial side.

[00:11:01] Ralph Estep Jr.: So don’t beat yourself up. We can fix this. And here’s the thing, it’s not complicated. What I do is not rocket science. It’s really transparency and clarity to make better decisions. So to answer your question, I know I went all the way around the bush and got back to it. Don’t beat yourself up about what happened before.

[00:11:18] Ralph Estep Jr.: Let’s fix where we are today and let’s move forward with confidence, because that’s what I really sell. I sell confidence. Confidence in your numbers. Confidence in making decisions and confidence that if the IRS comes, you go, ha, I work with Ralph. I got this figured out.

[00:11:34] Jeff Sieh: Got it. and, and even Zach Brown says, uh, he, he’s blown away by the line, you said, how can you make the decision if you can’t see the reality? Which is a great kind of segue into our next, the next question I have is, you know, as creators, a lot of us don’t have like a steady paycheck. Like we may have steady clients, but we don’t have that steady paycheck.

[00:11:54] Jeff Sieh: And a lot of time, you know, I kinda wanna know why does a regular creator income make [00:12:00] money feel harder to manage than like a traditional paycheck? You know, even when we’re earning great money, a lot of creators I know are, are easily making six figures, but it’s still a struggle because it’s that, you know, you have those ebbs and flows, ups and downs of the business.

[00:12:14] Jeff Sieh: Instead of getting like, you know, if somebody goes work, our local company is Eastman, they go to Eastman, they get a paycheck, they get all their taxes taken out, all that kind of stuff, you know, they’re done. So what do you tell people who are really feeling like, you know, okay, I’m a creator, but it seems really harder since I left my corporate job and doing this full time than what it used to be.

[00:12:31] Ralph Estep Jr.: It is. Because most creators are working 17 jobs

[00:12:35] Jeff Sieh: Yeah.

[00:12:35] Ralph Estep Jr.: because you’ve got money coming in from coaching, you got money coming in from AdSense, you got money coming in from PayPal and Stripe and this and that and the other thing. So rather than the person who gets the W2 and the pay stub every week, you got 15 different directions of money coming in. That’s the hardest part, Jeff. And then it’s like you’re on the rollercoaster. You’ve ever been on a rollercoaster and you, and you’re going, you’re like, oh, this is fun. And then you see that hill. You’re going up that hill, right? And you know what’s [00:13:00] coming after that hill, right? Well, content creators go through that every month.

[00:13:02] Ralph Estep Jr.: You might have a great month. I’m like, I knocked it outta the park, but then next month it’s like crickets. So that’s why as a content creator, having a system is 10 times more important than most people work in standard weekly or biweekly paycheck jobs. Because no one told you when you became a content creator that you also had to become an accountant, that you also had to become a marketing person, that you also had to become a payroll clerk.

[00:13:27] Ralph Estep Jr.: You own it, you’re an independent person. And by doing that, you’ve gotta pull all these things together. And that’s not easy. I’ll add another complication onto it. When you get money on PayPal, you don’t get it all on PayPal. They take their cut, this one takes their cut. And that’s another thing about that clarity.

[00:13:43] Ralph Estep Jr.: If you don’t understand that when somebody pays you two grand on one of these platforms, you don’t have two grand to spend. You might have 1750 or 1800, whatever that is. And so, and the problem that I’ve seen with most content creators, they have a really good month and they go buy [00:14:00] gear. ’cause we, we love gear.

[00:14:01] Ralph Estep Jr.: It, I, I got a whole studio full of gear. Like I, my wife is like, she doesn’t even ask at this point, Jeff, when she sees the Amazon boxes rolling up, she’s just like, dude, I have no idea how much you spend over there. My, my office is here on my farm and I built a studio here on my farm. And she, but anyway, we all do that, right?

[00:14:16] Ralph Estep Jr.: So we have a good month and then we say, oh yeah, you know, I, I can buy that microphone. I really wanted that shotgun. Like, it works great. I really wanted that. And then the problem is next month we don’t have anything coming in. So that’s why the system is so very important, because yes, your income is irregular.

[00:14:29] Ralph Estep Jr.: Welcome to the life of being a content creator. And, here’s the thing. Even if you scale, if you get bigger, more money doesn’t solve the problem.

[00:14:38] Ralph Estep Jr.: If the system’s broken, all more money does is make it worse.

[00:14:42] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, totally agree. and it’s, it’s funny you mentioned that, not having that money, it’s almost like when you first working for yourself for the first time and you’re, you’re used to your paycheck being, you know, some money going out for, you know, social security and stuff, but then it’s pretty much double when you do that.

[00:14:57] Jeff Sieh: When you start working for yourself, you don’t realize how [00:15:00] much your company. Covered half of that and like when my daughter worked for me and I was just explaining all that, she’s like, oh my gosh, this is crazy. So yeah, it’s a kind of a shock and you’re like, okay, I don’t have as much money as I, I really think I did

[00:15:11] Ralph Estep Jr.: here’s a great way to, to test that. Right. Go and take your, if you have young children, take ’em to the ice cream shop, give them an ice cream cone, and then take it back and bite half of it off and say to them, here’s how taxes work. You love that ice cream cone, didn’t you? But the government just took half of it.

[00:15:28] Ralph Estep Jr.: So I, I can curve at what you’re saying, John. A lot of people don’t realize that, Jeb, but you gotta pay attention to that.

[00:15:33] Jeff Sieh: right. there are a lot of, lot of eyeopening things when you first start doing it, for yourself. So what do you think really breaks first when creators start doing this? Is it like tracking income, separating the accounts, or planning for taxes? And, and why do you think that is? Like what, what, what is the thing that you see the most that people really, really struggle with as a creator with finance?

[00:15:52] Ralph Estep Jr.: I, I, I think it’s a domino effect. I think not having things separate creates the first problem when they’re not separate. It creates the [00:16:00] tracking problem because you have no way of tracking it, which creates the third problem, which is the tax number, because you have no idea how much you’re gonna owe in tax.

[00:16:08] Ralph Estep Jr.: So it truly, I, I can’t say to you that there’s one key to this, although I go back to what I said earlier. The first step is to separate things, because once you separate them, then you can build a tracking mechanism. And then once you build the tracking mechanisms, I can show you how to pay yourself first, how to pay Uncle Sam first, and then live off of what you actually have.

[00:16:29] Ralph Estep Jr.: So that’s the biggest problem, Jeff, is people don’t have that clarity. People are living in that fog. I call it, content creators, money, chaos, because in so many ways it’s chaos. And the problem is it just continues on itself because it just gets worse. It doesn’t get better. And if you think you’re gonna bury your head in the sand and pretend like, oh, this is gonna go away, it’s gonna solve itself when I make more money, it’s not, it’s going to get worse.

[00:16:53] Ralph Estep Jr.: You need a system. And, and I feel like I’m harping on that, but it, it all goes to the system. And the system doesn’t have to be [00:17:00] 15 steps and, you know, all these things you have to do. It’s really a system of. Understanding where things go. Simple income tracking, expense tracking, and then carving out the money where it needs to go. where you actually sit down every week, pick a day, put on your calendar like a doctor’s visit. This is my money check-in Now, don’t, don’t get overwhelmed by that. It can be 15 minutes long. You’re gonna look at a couple things. You’re gonna look at what came in this week, what went out, now how much do I have to set aside for taxes and how much do I actually have to spend?

[00:17:30] Ralph Estep Jr.: Once you start doing that, the fog starts to lift and that’s the biggest thing. When I work with content creators and I talk ’em through that, they’re like, Ralph, I thought this was gonna be so complicated. This is super simple. It’s the key is being consistent and always doing that every week without, you just don’t.

[00:17:47] Ralph Estep Jr.: That’s just what I do. Once you do that, all this stuff really kind of falls into place, and then when you have bad weeks or bad months. You are using those same percentages, it all applies.

[00:17:59] Jeff Sieh: So [00:18:00] I know a lot of people here are creators or they’re doing a side hustle as a creator and they still have a job, but they wanna do their, you know, their side hustle is their main source of, you know, income if they can grow it to a certain level. So, how early. Should a creator build a money system, even if their income feels like small, maybe they’re just getting affiliate income from, you know, Amazon or whatever, or it’s inconsistent like we’ve talked about before.

[00:18:23] Jeff Sieh: Like, so how early should a creator build money? And then the second part of that question will be, okay, so how soon should I hire an accountant versus, oh, I can do this myself.

[00:18:33] Ralph Estep Jr.: So the answer to the first question is the day before you start creating content is when you set up the money system.

[00:18:38] Jeff Sieh: Hmm.

[00:18:39] Ralph Estep Jr.: And you might say, Ralph, that’s bold. If your intention is for this to be a hobby, you still need a money If your intention is for this to be your full-time gig, which I meet a lot of content creators, that’s what they’re working for. You got to have a money system because whether you bring in a little or a lot, you’re going to have to account for this because if people are paying you money [00:19:00] or you’re spending money, you’ve got compliance issues from the beginning.

[00:19:05] Ralph Estep Jr.: So my answer to that is from the very onset of your content creation. And the problem is a lot of people think like that, Jeff. They say, well, you know, Ralph, I’m not too big. I, I, you know, I’m not, I only got little drips and drabs coming in. The problem is, at what point does that change? And now you’re struggling because something changed three months ago and you’re like, I wish I’d set that up ahead of time.

[00:19:26] Ralph Estep Jr.: So Jeff, the answer is set up your money system at the front end. I’m a believer in, start out with the end in mind.

[00:19:32] Jeff Sieh: it.

[00:19:32] Ralph Estep Jr.: you need that clarity you need to make. Because here’s the other thing, Jeff, as a content creator, you gotta ask yourself difficult questions. What is working? What’s not working? If your goal is to make money to replace income, if you don’t have any numbers, if you don’t have a system to do that, how can you ever make that decision?

[00:19:47] Ralph Estep Jr.: It’s, it’s virtually impossible.

[00:19:49] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, and we’re gonna talk about creating a, a money system in a little bit, but I wanted to, Ralph’s got a great, actual, uh, like giveaway for our audience. And you guys wanna make sure you get this. It’s the content creators [00:20:00] accountant.com/money. It’s a, free, uh, PDF guide that kind of walks you through some of this stuff in setting up this system if you haven’t done it already.

[00:20:09] Jeff Sieh: And I’ll tell you what folks, one of the things that I struggled with, and I had a bad accountant, when I first started, who made me feel like I was an idiot. Like, and I was, I was an idiot when it comes to finances, and it was a struggle. I had a lot of anxiety about it. But, uh, I wish I would’ve had something like this before I got as far as I did down my creator journey.

[00:20:28] Jeff Sieh: So content creator accountant.com/money. It’s free from Ralph. Make sure you guys go check that out, because it’s a great resource for you guys. but Ralph, there’s, there’s so much that about this and it is a lot of anxiety for a lot of people. I remember like waking up in a sweat, going, oh, the IRS is coming.

[00:20:44] Jeff Sieh: The IRS is coming and I had a bunch of issues. I overpaid, they owed me like $20,000 and it took like three years to get it back. They’ll take your money really fast getting it back’s a a little bit different story. so if someone feels behind or messy in their finances, [00:21:00] how do you help them reset without feeling that overwhelmed or ashamed, like I just said, like, what’s, what do they need to do?

[00:21:05] Jeff Sieh: Like, what’s the first step to kind of get out of the mess that they feel like they’re in?

[00:21:09] Ralph Estep Jr.: I feel bad for you because so many people Tell me what you just said. I hired an accountant and it made me feel like an idiot, Ralph. ’cause I was doing everything wrong. My business is relationships. It doesn’t help you for me to say to you, you’re an idiot. You didn’t know how to do this.

[00:21:25] Ralph Estep Jr.: I’m just assuming that you didn’t know how to do this because you didn’t go to school and get your MBA and spend 30 years doing it.

[00:21:31] Ralph Estep Jr.: That’s okay. The thing is, most of the time, I think the problem that you, you ran into is you hired the wrong person. So hire the person that’s going to talk to you like a human being.

[00:21:41] Ralph Estep Jr.: Hire the person that’s going to talk to you like you don’t know it, but I can explain it to you. One of the biggest compliments I’ve ever received from a client is they said to me, Ralph, you explain it in ways that don’t make me feel stupid. It’s all about the relationship, Jeff, and it’s finding that person that clicks with you.

[00:21:57] Ralph Estep Jr.: Now, I think because I work in the [00:22:00] content creator realm, I’m a great person to do that with and just, I’m not trying to plug myself here, but I can help anybody here. I actually offer a free 15 minute discovery call. You can go right to my website and schedule that because I wanna get to know you. I wanna get to know what you’re doing, and let’s see if it’s a good fit.

[00:22:16] Ralph Estep Jr.: Because if it’s a good fit, it, it all comes down to that relationship, Jeff, and, and, and, and there’s no judgment here because listen. Just like I’m taking speaking courses. I had no idea how to speak. If you don’t know money, why should I judge you for not knowing money? But, but you have to make the decision like, okay, I know there’s a problem here.

[00:22:35] Ralph Estep Jr.: There are things that I don’t know that I need to know. So you’ve got to invest in time and doing that and, and listen, here’s another thing I’ve noticed. A lot of content creators are scared to spend money. I get it. I don’t like to spend money either. But what they don’t think about is how much they’re losing in creativity and stress.

[00:22:53] Ralph Estep Jr.: Like you said, you were in a cold sweat, you were worried about it. You much did that. Take away from your ability to be creative. If [00:23:00] you’re constantly worried about the knock at the door, who’s coming next, how am I gonna pay my bills? The stress of that, if you could live in peace and have harmony and joy and still be successful, spend a couple dollars and go fight.

[00:23:14] Ralph Estep Jr.: I’m not saying you have to hire a full-time accountant. Be clear about that. You don’t have to do that. I, I think sitting down with somebody like me, or if you’re comfortable with somebody else and setting up a system, I think that the more you talk to them, the better. Like a lot of my clients are monthly clients where I set up a set of accounting services and we do it for you, which a lot of content creators love that because they’re like, oh, I just pay you Ralph, and you handle it.

[00:23:36] Ralph Estep Jr.: And I’m like, yes. They’re like, huh, where do I sign? I’m like, right here. I’ll send you a DocuSign. We’ll have a Zoom meeting. We’ll talk once a month. So find the person that you’re comfortable with, find the person that shows you ways to do things that you understand. But don’t be afraid to spend a couple bucks, because I’m gonna tell you right now, you were talking a little bit about, you were so surprised to have to pay that big tax bill.

[00:23:59] Ralph Estep Jr.: One of the things you were [00:24:00] talking about is what’s called self-employment tax, and I don’t really wanna go down a deep wormhole, but I meet creators all the time that are paying more tax than they need to. I was working with a creator a couple weeks ago. I looked at his tax return, I said, I can save you $9,000 right now.

[00:24:12] Ralph Estep Jr.: Are you interested? He goes, dude, where do I sign?

[00:24:15] Jeff Sieh: Right. Yeah.

[00:24:16] Ralph Estep Jr.: And it wasn’t, it wasn’t like I had some magic mystery ball and I was able to solve this. It’s a very simple thing. Had he not spent time and and done a consultation, me after the discovery call, he would’ve lost another nine grand, spend a couple hundred dollars with me to set up a discovery call.

[00:24:32] Ralph Estep Jr.: Now we’re gonna end up being, he’s gonna end up being a monthly client. ’cause he is like, grab, I don’t, I can’t do this. This is too complic. It’s overwhelming. And I get that. But you don’t have to start there. You can start by talking with somebody to help you build a system. And then once you build a system, you might, I give you a great example of this, Jeff.

[00:24:47] Ralph Estep Jr.: I do four different shows. I don’t do all my own production work ’cause I don’t have time to

[00:24:51] Jeff Sieh: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:52] Ralph Estep Jr.: So I hired a company that does that. They handle that. For me, it’s money well spent. To me, the cost benefit as an account. And I look at cost [00:25:00] benefit, For me to go learn. I use script. I do all these other things.

[00:25:02] Ralph Estep Jr.: I post shorts and I, I don’t have time, nor I do, I have the skillset to do that, so I go and hire somebody to do that, and I’m gonna encourage content creators, go hire somebody that can help you create the system and help you find that time. You still need to own this. You still need to have that weekly check-in.

[00:25:18] Ralph Estep Jr.: How are things going? But if you don’t have to own it, if you don’t have to manage it, somebody just handles it for you. There’s a lot of peace in that and it’s not as expensive as you would think.

[00:25:27] Jeff Sieh: So one of the things I wanted to, what, what should somebody look for when they, um. Are looking for a, somebody to help them with their finances if they want to go to an accountant. You know, I had that bad experience. You, you mentioned that a lot of people come to you and they talk about kind of the same thing.

[00:25:42] Jeff Sieh: What do you need to look for? ’cause there’s a lot of, you know, flimflam artists out there that aren’t, you know, they’re just wanting to take your money. They’ll, you know, they’re there at Walmart where you can just file your taxes. ’cause a lot of times the time we go as creators, ’cause we don’t have a lot of spare time, it’s like when something bad’s happened or we’re in a panic or, you know, oh my gosh, it’s tomorrow.

[00:25:59] Jeff Sieh: We’ve gotta file our [00:26:00] taxes. So what should we look for when we go, okay, it’s time to be serious. This is making money. This is a real business. What do I, what do I need to look for in an accountant or a financial advisor?

[00:26:11] Ralph Estep Jr.: Number one thing, licensing and credentials. I will license with the state of Delaware to practice public accounting. I’m not some tax guy that took a six weeks tax course at one of the big box stores, and I’m not criticizing these people. If you’ve got a very simple tax return, those people are fine. If you’re a content creator, you don’t have a very simple tax return.

[00:26:29] Ralph Estep Jr.: So first thing, look for somebody that’s credentialed. Second thing, look at their reviews. Go see what people are saying about them. Third thing, look for somebody that understands your industry. That’s why I jumped into this content creator’s accountant industry, because I understand the industry. Fourth thing is find somebody that can communicate.

[00:26:48] Ralph Estep Jr.: One of the main things I see people complaining about is I send my stuff to my accountant and I never hear from ’em. Then all of a sudden they call me a week or two before tax deadline and said, Hey Jeff, are we gonna get your stuff? And you’re like, [00:27:00] dude, I sent it to you three months ago. What’s going on? I, I’ll give you an example. Just this week, I had a guy call me.

[00:27:04] Ralph Estep Jr.: He says, Ralph, I’m in trouble with the IRS now. He should have called me two years ago. And we had a simple one hour call. We got into his IRS account and at the end of the call he says, Ralph, he says, you don’t realize how much pressure you just relieved from me.

[00:27:17] Ralph Estep Jr.: And he says, if I’d have known, it would’ve been this simple, I would’ve done this two years ago and not stressed about this.

[00:27:22] Ralph Estep Jr.: Now, here’s a guy that had an accountant, had a bookkeeper, but nobody took the time to explain to him where the problems were. And I said, dude, I can save you nine grand. Why didn’t your account mention this? Well, you know what? I don’t really hear from him. That’s a problem.

[00:27:38] Ralph Estep Jr.: If they can’t communicate with you, run the other direction while you’re talking about flimflam artists and do not go to Dr. Google or to chat GPT or one of those and say, I want you to be my accountant. What do I need to do? That’s a bad plan because there’s a lot of people out there selling snake oil about, oh, you, I can set up, you pay no taxes, you [00:28:00] can write off everything.

[00:28:01] Ralph Estep Jr.: You write off your house, write off your kids. I mean, the, the, the stuff that they promised is just a absolutely ridiculous, but, so pay attention to who you’re hiring and, and go and talk to other content creators. Who are they working with?

[00:28:13] Jeff Sieh: those are all great points. and so, once again, don’t forget about Ralph’s amazing, money system, handout that he’s got it. You can find it@contentcreatorsaccountant.com slash money. I wanted to ask you guys in the audience, if you had to guess what percentage. Of your income is going to taxes right now.

[00:28:32] Jeff Sieh: Do you know, is it 10 to 15%? Is it 20 to 25%, 30% more than that? Or maybe you have no idea. it’s really fascinating as, as we as entrepreneurs talk so much about making money, the ROI, you know, the cost analysis, all that kind of stuff, and we really don’t know what we’re paying in our taxes. So, uh, I would love to know if you guys have an idea or not.

[00:28:51] Jeff Sieh: Let me know wherever you’re watching from because we’re gonna be talking now about creating this money system that Ralph has been, uh, teasing a little bit about this. And this is stuff that, you [00:29:00] know, creators can actually start this week. So Ralph, walk us through like the core pieces of the Creator money system.

[00:29:06] Jeff Sieh: You know, like the separation. You’ve already talked about income tracking and the tax vault, which we really haven’t talked about. So why do those three fix so many problems at once?

[00:29:16] Ralph Estep Jr.: It is all about the system. So the first part of the system is number one, separate your money. That’s the basic, that is the gold standard of how you get started. Second thing, you’re building a tax vault. Let me explain what that means. So when you do that weekly money meeting, you see how much came in and then you have a percentage.

[00:29:35] Ralph Estep Jr.: You were alluding to this a second ago, Jeff. A percentage that automatically, before anything else happens goes off to what I call the tax vault. Now it’s nothing complicated. I’m not asking you to go put a storage unit on your property and call it the tax vault.

[00:29:48] Ralph Estep Jr.: It’s can be a simple savings account, a separate account where every week you take a percentage.

[00:29:54] Ralph Estep Jr.: Now we can talk about how you get to that percentage. I’ll give you the big picture first. Create that tax vault and carve that out. [00:30:00] ’cause now all of a sudden you don’t have that stress anymore. That money is set aside. So what you have left. Is the money that you can actually spend. Once you do that, it’s so eye-opening ’cause you’re like, I’m not worried about tax day anymore.

[00:30:12] Ralph Estep Jr.: I’m not worried about the what ifs. Now I can make clear decisions ’cause I actually see what I have to live on. I, I see what I can spend, I can see what bills I need to pay. And you can make decisions when you do that. But that’s the big piece of it. And this isn’t complicated. Like I said, this is really simple. Look at your tracking, carve out the tax point, point, the rest of it remains in the, in the regular check in account. You wanna do that. That’s what you can actually spend and live on. and that’s how simple the system is, it’s really that simple. But 90% of people who are struggling with this don’t have that basic system.

[00:30:46] Ralph Estep Jr.: So that’s really where it starts. Jeff.

[00:30:48] Jeff Sieh: So, yeah. So for me, I have you read the book, prophet First? Have you read

[00:30:52] Ralph Estep Jr.: Absolutely. I’m a huge fan of that. And what’s interesting about that, Jeff, is I went to school to be an accountant and my, my, my bachelor’s degree is in accounting and my master’s degree. [00:31:00] We never learned that in accounting school, and it wasn’t until like three or four years ago that people really been leaning on that.

[00:31:05] Ralph Estep Jr.: Now it’s perfect because then again, you start off with the end in mind. I don’t wanna interrupt you, but I think that’s huge and a lot of people don’t get that. But that’s exactly what I’m talking about is you, you are intentional in your money decisions from the very front end of that. So yeah, a hundred percent agree

[00:31:22] Jeff Sieh: Yes. So what I have done, and this makes it really easy, I know a lot of people use QuickBooks, which I just, I have such a love hate and more of a hate thing with QuickBooks. But, one of the things, ’cause I’ve used QuickBooks money and a lot of money comes in into that account, it’s really easy. I can create envelopes is what they call ’em.

[00:31:40] Jeff Sieh: And you can actually take that profit first kind of idea and put money into a separate little savings account, which actually gives you more, you know, you higher interest rate. And you can also do the same with that tax money that you had mentioned doing the tax vault. So I can do it all electronically, super easily.

[00:31:54] Jeff Sieh: I don’t have to put cash in envelopes like somebody always talks about, you know. but, It’s really, [00:32:00] it’s really makes it easy and I, for all of QuickBooks’s faults, that kind of thing inside of quick QuickBooks money is really, really cool that I can, like, as soon as I get paid and I make a paycheck and I’ll say, okay, this money is profit, this money is for taxes, and I’m done.

[00:32:13] Jeff Sieh: And that vault grows throughout the year, and then I can use it to pay taxes at the end.

[00:32:17] Ralph Estep Jr.: And actually I just made a relationship with a bank that offers that service too. And so I’m able to offer my customers and clients a bank that you can actually create up to 80 separate sub-accounts in your bank account app. And then you can do exactly that, that they were, it was all built under that model of that.

[00:32:35] Ralph Estep Jr.: So when money comes in, you have your operating checking account, you have your, another one we didn’t really talk about. You could have a gear fund, you could have whatever funds you want, but you’re carving those things out and you’re also carving out what you need to live on. ’cause that’s another big problem for content creators.

[00:32:49] Ralph Estep Jr.: You got that stress that the rent’s coming due or the mortgage or the car payment, and you’re grabbing money out of wherever you can find it. ’cause you gotta spend it. But the problem is, when you do that, then all of a sudden everything [00:33:00] gets muddied up and you’re back in that fog again. Well, if you carve out your pay at the front end, because that’s the thing a lot of content creditors don’t think about, you know, all of a sudden now how about medical insurance?

[00:33:10] Ralph Estep Jr.: How about retirement plan? How about all those things? You know, it’s great. You wanna be your own boss. You wanna be a, an independent content creator, that’s great, but there’s a lot that goes into that. So if we can build a system from the front end to carve out those pieces so that that’s stuff’s handled, you know, I just think that’s such a huge thing, Jeff.

[00:33:28] Ralph Estep Jr.: And, and they’re, and the thing is, the tools are just right there for you. Now, they’re not expensive and they’re simple. You just have to set ’em up.

[00:33:34] Jeff Sieh: So how do creators decide what percentage to move into that tax vault if their income fluctuates, you know, month to month. Sometimes, you know, especially with affiliate stuff, I know a lot of my friends get money in from affiliates, like from Amazon or whatever, and that’s based off of sales, you know, and it, it just kind of, it can really vary.

[00:33:52] Jeff Sieh: So how do you know what to take and put in that tax vault,

[00:33:56] Ralph Estep Jr.: Yeah, and that’s months ago sales too, because it’s not even what happened last week. This is [00:34:00] like three months ago. You’re finally getting paid for something. You have to start somewhere. When I’m counseling clients, I say, let’s take a look at your tax return from last year. What was your federal tax percentage?

[00:34:10] Ralph Estep Jr.: Now I know you’re in Texas, you don’t pay state income tax, but let’s just keep it simple. What was the federal tax rate that you paid? Was it 20%? Was it 25%? Again, this depends because you could have an S corp, you could have an LLC ways to shelter some of that, but start there. What was your tax obligation from last year?

[00:34:27] Ralph Estep Jr.: Let’s use a simple example. 25%. I think that’s a good place to start. Now if all of a sudden during the year you’re hitting, you’re hitting home runs every week, you may have to push that up a little bit. The thing is, once you put the money, and I love what you say, you said, I had paid all this money to IRS, I end up getting back.

[00:34:41] Ralph Estep Jr.: It took three years to get it. The cool thing about the tax vault is that money’s yours. So if things go down at the end of the year or something like that, your money’s still there. It’s not gone. It’s growing interest. It’s your buffer. So I, I would rather somebody put a higher percentage [00:35:00] at the front end and not have the surprise, surprise gomer pile come April 15th.

[00:35:04] Ralph Estep Jr.: ’cause that’s never fun. I deal with the, I gotta make those calls sometimes, Jeff, I gotta get on the phone with somebody and say, Hey Jeff, I just finished your taxes. And they’re like, oh, great. How good is it? I’m like, you owe 10 grand Jeff. And you’re like, what in the world? How did that happen?

[00:35:17] Jeff Sieh: Yeah.

[00:35:18] Ralph Estep Jr.: I’m gonna prevent that because I’m, if I, if we had that conversation, you’d be like, oh, that’s cool dude.

[00:35:22] Ralph Estep Jr.: I got 12 grand over here in the taxable. You’re like, bonus, everything’s great. So pick a higher percentage at the front end. Pick something. I think if you want me to give you a, a, I should probably have said this. I am not giving you advice on your particular situation. I can’t do that. But from a, from a basic standpoint, I think 25 percent’s a pretty good number.

[00:35:42] Ralph Estep Jr.: Now if you’ve got state taxes, add to that, I’m in Delaware. Delaware state taxes go up to like 8%. So I’m gonna do 25 plus eight. If you don’t have an en entity or something like that, you gotta worry about that Self-employment tax. Lemme drop a bomb on you. Self-employment tax is [00:36:00] 15.2%. That’s why this multiplies so fast.

[00:36:02] Ralph Estep Jr.: So think about my 25 at the front, at another 15. What are we at 40? And then if you’ve got a state tax, 48% potentially, but know your situation, but, but look at last year’s taxes. And then if things are going up, push that up a little bit.

[00:36:14] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. and that’s one of the reasons other than some protection that I got when I first started my company all those years ago that I was a S-corp. I, I had partners in all sorts of things, but the S-corp has saved my bacon a lot of times with some of that, you know, self-employment tax and then some of the liability that you have.

[00:36:30] Jeff Sieh: I know a lot of creators when they first start, they’re just, they’re just doing self-employment and, you know, talk to somebody like Ralph and look at an LLC an S-corp or doing a, you know, an S-corp that acts like an LLC, all that kind of stuff. you need to talk to somebody because it can save you significant amount of money, if you set up your entity the right way.

[00:36:48] Ralph Estep Jr.: We do that. Jeff, just to let you know, we do set up entities and it depends on your situation. I might put you into one entity. Entity. I’m gonna, here’s the thing that’s different about me. I’m gonna talk to you and talk through what you’re going to do. [00:37:00] Let’s, let’s, let’s get all the information, because if you go out there on Reddit or something like that and say, you gotta be an S Corp, I’ve seen so many people set up things that were just completely backwards, and then I gotta go back and fix them.

[00:37:12] Ralph Estep Jr.: And it doesn’t cost a lot to do it at the front end. Just get it right from the beginning.

[00:37:16] Jeff Sieh: So this is a rabbit trail, but when you were talking about setting up an an S corp, you see a lot of these companies advertising, Hey, set it up in Delaware, or set it up in this state because of, I don’t know, is that a real thing? Should you think about setting up a entity in another state to save money?

[00:37:31] Jeff Sieh: Or is that for the big wigs like Intel and you know, all that kind of stuff?

[00:37:35] Ralph Estep Jr.: I’m gonna answer the question by saying yes and no. Is it a real thing? Yes. Because in some states you don’t have to disclose who the owners of a company are. So one of the things, and I’m not an attorney, I don’t play one on tv, but one of the legal sides of this is by setting up an entity, you’re doing what’s called a corporate veil.

[00:37:54] Ralph Estep Jr.: You’re creating a screen between you and the business. Some states allow you to hide behind that [00:38:00] corporate veil. So we act as I, I’ll, I’ll go into weeds here for a second. If we set up an entity for somebody, we are the registered agent. So basically what that means is when you set up an artificial entity, an LLC or an S-corp, because it’s not a person, it has to have an agent that represents it.

[00:38:16] Ralph Estep Jr.: Well, if you go on to the Delaware Division of Corporations and look up, I’m just gonna say, Jeff c Inc. If we set that up, the only thing you’re gonna see now, I wouldn’t, I would definitely not advise you to use your name because what’s the point of doing that? But let’s just say you do, the only thing they’re gonna see is my name and my address.

[00:38:33] Ralph Estep Jr.: So you’ve kept that corporate veil. Now, some states don’t allow you to do that. Now, I can’t speak to all 50 states. We set up a lot of Delaware corporations because Delaware has great corporate tax law. But to be honest with you, from a practical standpoint, unless you’ve got a thousand shareholders and you’re worried about some kind of minority stockholder revolt.

[00:38:53] Ralph Estep Jr.: You’re never going to use those things. So again, I’m not giving legal advice, but I don’t know that it really matters. [00:39:00] We set up Delaware entities because that’s where we are. The nice thing about a Delaware entity is I can work with it in all the different states, and that’s, we’ll go down a little bit of a worm mode.

[00:39:08] Ralph Estep Jr.: People don’t know this. Your entity is at the state level. So if you set up an entity in Texas, you’re covered in Texas. But if you do business in Oklahoma, guess what? Your entity doesn’t transfer to Oklahoma. A lot of people don’t know that. You may, and it depends. Again, we’re doing an intellectual property, but if you have a physical presence in another state, you may need to set up an entity in that state or do something that’s called a foreign entity registration.

[00:39:35] Ralph Estep Jr.: So if you came to me, Jeff, and you said, Ralph, you know where I’m at? I’m in Texas. I would say, great. Here’s what I would do. I would set up a Delaware entity for you, and then I would file what’s called foreign status. Registration in the state of Texas. So then you have the benefit of the Delaware courts and you have the registration in the state of Texas.

[00:39:53] Ralph Estep Jr.: Does it cost a little more? Yeah, you’re gonna pay an annual franchise tax. That’s what the states charge for the benefit of having it. But [00:40:00] you have so much more protection by doing that, Jeff. But a lot of people don’t know that. They just assume, well, if I wanna work in all 50 states, it’s, I just need one thing.

[00:40:07] Ralph Estep Jr.: And it’s funny, a lot of people think they just go to IRS and get an EIN number, which is an employer identification number, and now they got an LLC and I’m, no, you don’t. You’ve got, you’ve got, you’ve got a piece of paper that has a number on it and a name, but that doesn’t mean anything.

[00:40:20] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. See, this is why folks, why you need people like Ralph to help you, get through this stuff. ’cause I would not even know that I just asked that question kind of off the cuff and I’m like, okay. Didn’t know any of that. So, that’s why it’s so important to find a advisor and a CPA that you can trust, because it is super important when you’re setting all this stuff up.

[00:40:37] Jeff Sieh: So, Ralph, we mentioned this, like a weekly check-in money meeting. it’s a lot more, effective than like trying to get serious about finances like once a year at, you know, in April or tax time. So what can we do? Why is that so important? And how much time do you like estimate?

[00:40:53] Jeff Sieh: Like a simple weekly money meeting for yourself is.

[00:40:57] Ralph Estep Jr.: It is the most important thing you’ll do in your financial [00:41:00] side of content creation because if you wait, you’re not gonna do it. Let’s just be honest. Most of us are not going to do it. We’re just gonna put it off. Oh, I’ll get to that. you know, that’s a good thing to do in September. Oh, that’s a good thing to do in November.

[00:41:11] Ralph Estep Jr.: Oh, during the holidays I’ll catch up. Nobody does that. So create that weekly meeting, and here’s the best part, Jeff, 15 minutes.

[00:41:18] Ralph Estep Jr.: That’s all you need. And you need to ask yourself three simple questions. What came in? What went out? How much have I carved out into the separate pieces? And that’s really your money meeting because once you do those things, then you can decide, oh, I’ve got this gear purchase I wanna do, or maybe you wanna hire a va, maybe you wanna hire an editor.

[00:41:36] Ralph Estep Jr.: How can you possibly make those decisions if you don’t know where you stand? And so many contact, and I’m not, I’m not gonna say just contact creators. So many small business people are flying by what’s in the bank account. If they’ve got money in their bank account, they’re like, Hey, I’m doing great.

[00:41:51] Ralph Estep Jr.: What’s in your bank account? Doesn’t tell me anything. I need to know what is spoken for, what, what, what, what’s on the horizon ca, because that’s the thing that syncs small business [00:42:00] people is cash flow. You might have money coming in, but if you don’t manage the cash flow and you can’t manage cash flow after the fact, this is an intentional thing and that’s why I say take 15 minutes, create the system ahead of time, then 15 minutes, you check a couple basic, I, I guess said fancy words, KPIs.

[00:42:17] Ralph Estep Jr.: That’s what you’re looking at. Everybody in kind of creation does this already, don’t we? We look at, oh, how many downloads did I have? How many comments did I have on YouTube? How many people are looking at my tiktoks and my reels? You are already doing it. I’m just saying, do this for your money.

[00:42:31] Ralph Estep Jr.: I, I know I tell you what, dude, I look at my downloads. I, I got a, I got a problem. Like I, I got an addiction to the download counter. I need to stop. But, but, but if I, if, if a kind of creator’s thinking, well, Ralph, this is gonna take all my time. No, it’s not 15 minutes a week, but make it a holy appointment.

[00:42:46] Ralph Estep Jr.: In other words, that is on your calendar, whether no matter what happens. So pick a time, be intentional about picking a time. This is what I’m going to do. Have a set of books. Now you don’t have to go get QuickBooks. I like QuickBooks. It’s got its positive and its negatives. I think [00:43:00] having a system is better, but a system that you’re going to actually use is better than all of those things.

[00:43:05] Ralph Estep Jr.: If you’ve got an envelope system, my grandparents used to use an AMO system. I’m totally cool with that. It keeps you square. That’s fine. If you like spreadsheets, I hate spreadsheets. You wanna use spreadsheets, I’m cool with that. If you want to use Wave or QuickBooks online or I, you, you can use all kinds of apps.

[00:43:21] Ralph Estep Jr.: I don’t care. Pick something you’re going to use and pick something. You’re going to be consistent in managing every single week, because if you wait till the end of the month, you’re not gonna do it. If you wait till the end of the quarter, you’re not gonna do it. And then you’re gonna be in Ralph’s office in March, and I’m saying, you just got a 10 99 K form from PayPal since you made $120,000 last year.

[00:43:41] Ralph Estep Jr.: Jeff, do you have any expenses for that, Jeff? And you’re like, dude, uh uh. Yeah, I, I think I do. And here’s another problem. Jeff, you didn’t answer me about this, but I’m gonna go here. A lot of people think that credit card statement or that bank statement is enough evidence. It’s not examiners wanna see a receipt bigger than that.

[00:43:59] Ralph Estep Jr.: They wanna see a [00:44:00] receipt that has information on it. What was it for? Why did you spend it? You need to have a story. All of us as content creators are becoming good storytellers. You gotta think the same way with your finances. If you just give a, an examiner, you credit card statements say, oh yeah, well these are all the things I paid for.

[00:44:15] Ralph Estep Jr.: They’re gonna say to you, that’s great. Gimme the receipts. And let’s just say, by chance you kept the receipts. If you don’t have a narrative on that receipt, you’re gonna have no way of knowing. So here’s a real simple, here’s a big pro tax tip. Whenever you spend money, everybody carries these phones with them in their hands all the time now, right?

[00:44:30] Ralph Estep Jr.: Write on the receipt where you were, who were you with, and what it was for, and take a picture of it with your phone. That’s an accounting system. Now, I’m gonna encourage you to go get some, some, some software and add those things in. There’s money feeds that you can, or bank feeds you can use with some of these, but.

[00:44:44] Ralph Estep Jr.: Even that, and then just go create a simple cloud drawer system. Here’s my January folder, my February folder. Again, you see what I’m doing here, Jeb? It’s not complicated, but it starts in that one little thing because one little thing adds to another little thing and adds to another little thing. A lot of people just got [00:45:00] back from Pod Fest.

[00:45:01] Ralph Estep Jr.: So one of the things I say to people is, how much did you spend a pod fest? Oh, I don’t know. It’s, I’ll get my credit card statement at the end of the month. Okay, you’re not gonna look at it. So a year from now when your accountant says, how much did you spend at Pod Fest, or how much you spend in travel, like, oh, I don’t know.

[00:45:13] Ralph Estep Jr.: Lemme go figure it out. Well, if you’re taking pictures of those things as you go, you can say, oh, I know. Oh, I had lunch with Jeff. Had a great time. We did this, we did that. I took an Uber from the airport. I got the receipt, I’ve got a picture of it. I got the who I was with the why I was there and what this for.

[00:45:28] Ralph Estep Jr.: That is the key. That is the beautiful part of having a system and doing it day in and day out, week in and week out.

[00:45:35] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. In fact a lot of those, you know, like QuickBooks even has apps that will actually attach those pictures. Now I always keep it on my phone and then also do one another picture for the QuickBooks, because sometimes those apps can get a little funky and like your stuff can, I just am scared it’s gonna disappear.

[00:45:49] Jeff Sieh: So I always take a photo and then also attach it to it and kind of add it to your accounting software. A lot of those, do that as well. Real quickly, I wanna do a final, uh, shout out to our sponsors. If you [00:46:00] wanna know how we’re doing this amazing show, you can find out more at Ecamm dot com slash jeff.

[00:46:03] Jeff Sieh: You can say 15% by using code Jeff 15 in your checkout, and they’ve got an amazing thing coming up. It’s the leap into video about camera confidence coming up next week. You can find out more about that at leap dot Ecamm dot com. Make sure to go check that out. Tell ’em Jeff sent you. we really do thank Ecamm for sponsoring this show.

[00:46:22] Jeff Sieh: They’ve got amazing stuff. Right now in beta that I can’t wait to share with you. I’m not, uh, you just need to go check it out. If you haven’t gone to their Facebook group, I dunno if I can say it yet ’cause it’s still in beta, but it’s very, very cool. So make sure you go check Ecamm out. That’s amazing software.

[00:46:36] Jeff Sieh: Amazing group of people over there. Alright, Ralph, as we wrap up, I wanna make sure people also know about the content creators accountant.com/money. We’ve been talking about this money system that you have put together. This is a great PDF that you can download for free@contentcreatorsaccountant.com slash money, which helps you get this stuff set up and uh, uh, really, really helpful for creators when you first getting started or even if you’ve not been [00:47:00] doing money right, uh, for a long time.

[00:47:02] Jeff Sieh: Like some of us, which will not be named, um. Last, little question I have for the audience is if your income dipped next month, if it went down, would you feel prepared or panicked? Let us know down below wherever you’re watching from. would you be prepared a little nervous or would you be full on, oh my gosh, what do I do?

[00:47:20] Jeff Sieh: I’m gonna go, uh, move to Mexico or a a, a place where I can hide, if your income dipped. So let us know where you’re, what you think. So one of the things, Ralph, and this is, it’s about sleeping better at night. you’ve given us a lot of tips to this and this does make a difference. And you mentioned being creative and how that anxiety can really affect you, which is very, very true ’cause I’ve been in those, shoes before.

[00:47:42] Jeff Sieh: so what do you think changes emotionally for creators once they actually know what they can safely spend each month? You meant mentioned like gear you can buy, stuff like that, but like what, what have you seen from clients who’ve come in who’ve kind of gone through your system that okay. The feelings they have afterwards when they kinda get this [00:48:00] plan in place.

[00:48:00] Ralph Estep Jr.: Well, because what we’re really talking about, Jeff, is fear of the unknown. If you don’t know what’s going on in your business and every content creator’s in business, I’ll start by saying that every content creator’s in business, I don’t care whether you’re a hobbyist or this is your full-time gig, if you don’t know what’s going on in your business, you live in a constant state of fear.

[00:48:18] Ralph Estep Jr.: You have fear about what’s gonna happen. Like you just talked about, what do I do next month if the income’s lower? I have fear about what’s gonna happen at tax time. I have fear about what if I get audited? I have fear about how am I gonna feed my children? How am I gonna pay my mortgage? So by creating a system, you’re breaking down the fear, which leads to confidence.

[00:48:35] Ralph Estep Jr.: And that’s the difference, is when you’re confident in the decisions. I can’t promise you that you’re gonna have steady income. I can’t promise you that all the different sources of income are always gonna be steady and all those sort of things. But what I can promise you is you have a system. You know what to expect you.

[00:48:52] Ralph Estep Jr.: And then you can live in a sense of freedom without fear, because that’s really what we’re talking about, Jeff. It’s fear. It’s that fear of the unknown. And when you [00:49:00] live in fear, think about it yourself. If you’re trying to be creative, you’re trying to think of, oh, I got this great show planned. And the whole time you’re thinking, man, I got $12 in my bank account.

[00:49:09] Ralph Estep Jr.: How am I gonna make this work? And I know it’s tax time and I know the accountant’s fixing to call me and say, you owe money because I’ve been taking money all year, but I haven’t put a a nickel aside. That’s fear, dude. And when you’re living in that, you can’t sleep at night, your health gets affected.

[00:49:24] Ralph Estep Jr.: That’s what I’ve seen clients go through. I’ve seen clients have heart conditions, not, not physically harken, but you just been tore up that they can’t accomplish anything because they’re constantly living in that fear of the unknown. They’re living in fog. So when you break the fog, it might not be a great picture.

[00:49:39] Ralph Estep Jr.: You see at first, Jeff. It might be a train wreck, it might be a mess you might be spending. I call subscriptions death by a thousand cuts. You might be in that case, like I, I don’t know how many more AI tools I can possibly buy, but like, I think my credit card company said is like, is this real you? ’cause you already have 15 of these, you want

[00:49:55] Ralph Estep Jr.: another one. But that, again, it comes down to knowledge. Knowing what’s going out, [00:50:00] knowing what’s coming in. Once you know that, then you can make decisions. ’cause right now you’re making decisions in the dark. It’s like I put a blindfold around you and said, Hey, go do content creation with a blindfold. You wouldn’t know what to push, what, what to do.

[00:50:10] Ralph Estep Jr.: And that, and that affects you in so many ways. It tears up your, your relationships. Here’s the thing, we didn’t talk about this today, but the number one thing that destroys relationships is money discussions. And if you’ve got stress over money, it’s going to affect your relationship with your friends.

[00:50:25] Ralph Estep Jr.: It’s gonna affect your relationship with your spouse, your whatever those things look like, it’s going to do that. So if we can stop that, just trust me on this. In 30 days, in 30 days, you will feel completely different.

[00:50:37] Jeff Sieh: yeah, it’s, it’s the big, and for me, ’cause I talk about creativity all the time, it was probably one of the biggest creativity killers with that anxiety of like, okay, I wanna do this, but I’ve gotta go. Like, I, I hate doing this stuff. And that’s why I love talking to people like Ralph and having people that I can hire like Ralph because it makes a huge difference in allowing me to be more creative.

[00:50:56] Jeff Sieh: Ralph, this kind of final question I wanna ask you is like, what do you, [00:51:00] from all the people you’ve seen, all the creators that have come in that need help, like what’s one financial habit you see that the, the creators kind of resist at first, but later say that’s changed everything for them?

[00:51:10] Ralph Estep Jr.: I think the biggest one is tracking, because most content creators, like I don’t want anybody knowing what I’m doing because they don’t want the realization of what they’re really spending. That’s the problem. Like they don’t get, like each subscription adds up, each piece of gear adds up. and and once they start tracking that, then they can make better decisions.

[00:51:26] Ralph Estep Jr.: They’re like, wow. Like I, I had no clue that I had all these subscriptions. I don’t even use half of this stuff, Ralph, but I’ve set up for, I, I paid for a year in advance ’cause it gave me a special deal. Well the problem is then those things renew on their own and you got another year you’re not using. So it’s having that ability.

[00:51:41] Ralph Estep Jr.: So to tracking is the big thing there. Jeff. Once, that’s what people say to me all the time, is like, gr I had no idea. I had no idea that I was only making 80 cents on the dollar when I’m going through this platform. I had no idea about that. There’s better ways to do it. So when you have that information, then you can make intentional decisions.

[00:51:58] Ralph Estep Jr.: That’s when you can be dynamic [00:52:00] and really go somewhere with your content creation and pay your bills and live a joyful life. That’s the key to this whole thing.

[00:52:06] Jeff Sieh: awesome. Well, Ralph, this has been amazing and once again you guys make sure you guys go check out is giveaway that you can go download@contentcreatorsaccountant.com slash money. Ralph, as we wrap up, tell people where they can find it. You all the podcasts that you have, the, the floor, my friend is now yours.

[00:52:24] Ralph Estep Jr.: So I do so many things. The easiest way to find me is@askralph.com. It’s really that simple. Ask ralph.com. You can find all my content there. If you wanna reach out to me, you can go there and do that. If you wanna schedule a 15 minute discovery call with me, you can go there and do that. So I encourage you to do that.

[00:52:40] Ralph Estep Jr.: Listen, I am a believer in the community. I think content creators are one of the best communities I’ve ever seen. And just reach out to me. I’d be happy to help you. But check it all out@asgraph.com. The content creators account is a weekly show. I do it both in audio and video. I think we’re on episode 13 or 14, I can’t remember exactly, but go check it out.[00:53:00]

[00:53:00] Ralph Estep Jr.: And, I, I’m confident you’re gonna find value in that and reach out to me. I’m happy to talk to you. I’m, I’m not trying to make a big dollar from you. I wanna help you because when I help you, it just builds community and it builds success for all of us because when you grow to that point that you, that you need somebody like me, then you’re like, oh, I go to Ralph.

[00:53:17] Ralph Estep Jr.: He, he got taken care of.

[00:53:18] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, this has been a amazing, you know, you guys, it’s, uh, a little at first like ripping off a bandaid. It may hurt at the beginning, but then it starts to heal and then it does better than it’s ever before. So make sure you guys go check all the stuff out@askralph.com. He is amazing. And folks, thank you guys for watching today.

[00:53:37] Jeff Sieh: Thank you, Zach Brown. Thank you, uh, Mr. Rich Graham and all the people who watched and left comments today. We really appreciate you. Thank you for Ecamm who helps actually sponsor the show. You find out more about them at Ecamm dot com slash Jeff. And with that, we’ll see you guys next time. Bye everybody.